Occupational stress and school management. Questionnaire and hierarchy of causes

Abstract

The aims of this research are the following: a) to design a scale to measure head teachers’ stress; b) to analyze stress level of this group; and c) to establish a hierarchy of stress causes on school management. Coherently, this paper presents a reliable, valid and unpublished scale of twenty seven items with a factorial structure that explain the 62% of the variance and with an Alfa coefficient of 0.89. It is concluded that administrators do not suffer from high stress level. Moreover it is pointed out that the main stress causes on school management, grouped in seven dimensions: a) overwork; b) educational administration and role ambiguity; c) teachers and role conflict; d) students, complaints and leading meetings; e) families; f) management team; and g) non-teaching personnel.